Two forearms rest on a wooden table, each with a black and grey fine line peony tattoo on the inner forearm.

Matching peony tattoos on two forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows two forearms resting side by side on a wooden table, each with a single peony in outline with soft shading. The petals are drawn with fine, detailed linework and layered grey shading that gives them depth. The flowers are set near the elbow on each arm, against a dark background and a black sweater sleeve.

Fine line Botanical Forearm Peony Flower Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The peony bed under the north wall had not been divided in nine years, so when the roots heaved up through the gravel that March, I took the fork to them myself. Brother Anselm said the old clump was too tired to give anything, but I had dug enough beds to know a root that wants cutting. Two novices stood at the edge of the path with their hands folded inside their sleeves, pretending not to watch.

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Their names were Ruth and Bea, and they had come up the lane the same week in the same wet coat, which the prioress thought a sign and I thought a coincidence. I split the crown into two pieces with the blade of an old spade, each piece with three fat pink buds showing at the top like knuckles. "Plant them where you can see them from the kitchen," I told them. "A peony sulks if it's moved, so you'll need patience."

Ruth left for the dairy in June and Bea for the infirmary in September, and neither stayed to see a bloom. Years later a woman who had stayed in the guesthouse sent a postcard from Ghent. She had seen two peonies in a courtyard garden there, grey-green leaves folded like a shawl, the flowers the same size and turned the same way toward the light.

I went out the next May and cut a stem from the north bed, the clump I had thought spent. It had come up twice as wide. I left the stem on the cloister wall for whoever walked past next, because a thing divided honestly should keep opening on both sides.